|
Samajwadi Party on Wednesday claimed that the call for celebrating Dr BR Amebdkar's birth anniversary on April 14 as Dalit Diwali had received a huge response from the people in rural areas across the state.
Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav is making a push to charm Dalits. The SP leader last week announced plans to organise Dalit Diwali on April 14, the birth anniversary of Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. Following that, he announced the setting up of a frontal organisation, Baba Saheb Vahini, named after the Dalit icon. A few Dalit groups affiliated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and other outfits, however, decried the move.
Samajwadi Party spokesman Rajendra Chaudhary said, "The party had given a call for Dalit Diwali but it is a people's programme and reports are pouring in from across the state that the people in rural areas, particularly from the Dalit community, lighted lamps and also burst firecrackers."
With less than a year left for the UP assembly elections, the Samajwadi Party fired the salvo of Dalit Diwali to woo the Dalit community. The SP is confident of making a dent into the Dalit vote bank of the Bahujan Samaj Party as it believes that the Dalits are no longer enarmoured to its leader Mayawati and her party.
The Samajwadi Party chief had aligned with the Bahujan Samaj Party, which sees Dalits as its primary constituency, ahead of the last Lok Sabha elections in 2019. The alliance proved to be a fiasco.
Sources in SP said after the aborted alliance with the BSP, Akhilesh Yadav decided to capture at least a slice of the Bahujan Samaj Party's traditional vote bank amid a growing political perception of increased proximity between the BSP and the BJP.
Political analysts say Dalit voters will play a crucial part in deciding the outcome of the 2022 assembly polls in UP and that is why all parties are attempting to reach out to them. They also maintain that the BSP has lost some of its charm among the Dalit community, opening up opportunities for others to step in. Many also feel that Akhilesh Yadav is busy gathering "small pockets" of votes. A few days ago, he said he would forge alliances with small parties for the assembly elections.
Other parties including the BJP, Congress and Bhim Army are all eyeing Dalit votes for the polls. Their main focus, however, is on the non-Jatav voters. The ruling BJP has made a sizable dent in the non-Jatav vote bank, but analysts say it will be interesting to see how Akhilesh Yadav works on the ground to attract some of these people to his side.